Stealing Kathryn (13 page)

“Shame?” she said through her clenched teeth. “Try anger, you moron!” She lashed out suddenly with her free hand, punching him hard in the chest. Hmm. He really must be changing as his sister and she claimed. He shouldn’t have felt it through the thickness of his hide, and yet he did. Oh, it was rather like a butterfly landing on his nose, certainly nothing painful, but still…“You’re a jerk! A total user and a manipulating…jerk!” She punched him again, but only managed to hurt herself in the process as she pulled her fisted hand back and shook it out as if in pain, muttering “ow” under her breath.

“As I said, it was honestly meant. That was the man before you now who was in that dream, and I did exactly what I would have done had it been real. The only difference between them was the look of me. You’d have never let this beast touch you like that, and that is what has you so angry.”

“I—” Her mouth shut closed with a snap. What could she say? That he was wrong? They both knew it would be a lie. That he was right? She didn’t want to admit to herself that she could be so shallow.

“Come, I will show you to your room.”

He stepped forward but she yanked back against his hand. “You’re not going to put me back in that—that cage, are you?”

He looked back at her, puzzled. “You’ll be free to come and go as you like now. Before, I was trying to keep you secret from Aerlyn. Now she clearly knows you’re here and it no longer matters.”

“Please,” she implored him, her big gray eyes going wide, “don’t put me back in there!”

“But…that room holds the most exquisite treasures any of the planes have to offer. Why would you not want to sleep among them?”

“Because I don’t want to be one of those treasures!”

“Well, that is unfortunate,” he hissed through his teeth, “because you already are one of those treasures. That is my bed and my room and you will sleep by my side, where I can enjoy you!”

“Enjoy me?” Her already wide eyes were huge. “Do you m-mean…you expect me to…”

“No, damn you! I am no fool! I know what I am! I don’t need your looks of horror to know what a monster I am. I would never force you to take me. I may be a brute, but I am not a total fiend. You would never survive me by even the largest stretch of the imagination, and I take much better care of my treasures than that!”

He turned to the next flight of stairs, yanking her up behind him.

Chapter 7

Kathryn stumbled in his wake as she was pulled cruelly along, but she didn’t make the smallest sound of complaint. She was too busy being relieved that he didn’t expect her to have sex with him. Just with her imagination alone she couldn’t even grasp the concept of how something like that would work. She was so relieved that she didn’t even complain when he dragged her into that hateful room and flung her onto the bed. Everything was kept in such supreme order, she found it hard to believe someone so big and so full of volatile emotions had managed to never go off on any of these priceless trinkets. As she looked around at some of the fragile sculptures and fine-worked glass touched in hand-painted gold, she again wondered at how he had managed to avoid doing any damage. How was it that in some part of himself he could exercise enough control to spare his precious ornaments, and yet just now he’d nearly yanked her arm out of her socket?

She got to her hands and knees and crawled up to the head of the bed. There were a dozen plush pillows up against the headboard, each one unique in fabric or stitching or some kind of design. Kathryn had to admit that they were each lovely on their own, but as a collection it seemed a shame to even touch them, never mind sleep on them. But now she climbed on top of them, clinging to the finely etched stone of the bed, the coldness of it seeping into her fingers as she watched with wary eyes the beast who had captured her.

She couldn’t believe she was there again. What had she been thinking, asking to stay with him? Oh. Right. The other choice was to stay with a bunch of ghosts. The Ampliphi, he’d called them. Creatures from another plane. Perhaps even another dimension. Alternate realities that were similar to one another in some ways and vastly differing in others. For instance, this fortress Adrian and his sister lived in. It reminded her of one of those old castles in Europe. Everything lined in marble and elegant plaster, vast spaces and curving staircases, all of a grand design. Yet nowhere in this room was there a window. The basements had been lit by torches like something out of old Dracula’s castle, but here there were gas lamps smoking softly from every wall, sending flickering but steady light against every precious surface in the room.

And Adrian. A man yet not a man. Clearly he was a being with all the lustful desires of a man, but it was obvious to anyone who saw him that there was no human woman alive who could bear the brunt of his desires. They would most likely be very dark, almost, if not completely, violent. If he couldn’t contain his rage from one moment to the next, how did he expect to control something as volatile as passion?

He didn’t expect to. He’d said it himself. He could not and would not touch her, for fear of breaking her. Kathryn shivered, tucking her knees up tighter to her chest as she watched him prowl and pace at the foot of the bed. He ran darkly clawed hands through his hair as he chuffed and growled in short, punctuated bursts. He turned suddenly, making her gasp as those vivid green eyes pinned her in place. After a moment he went to a small lacquered sideboard, inserted a single claw in a polished ring, and pulled open the drawer in the center. He reached in and pulled out a long sheaf of liquid fabric, the length of it snaking and fluttering in his wake as he rounded the bed and came up to her.

“Put this on,” he commanded gruffly.

He dropped the thing at and over her feet, the pale peach color of it almost blending with the skin on her ankles. Unable to help herself, she reached down to touch it, feeling the liquid-soft silkiness and stifling a little moan at the pleasure of how it felt. She pulled it up into her hands so she could see what it was, and it only took her an instant to realize the thin spaghetti straps and the finely worked lace bodice belonged to a nightgown. One that would cling to every curve and leave her very, very exposed. The fabric was so tissue thin and pale in color it was most certainly see-through.

“I can’t wear this,” she whispered, not sure if it was the immodesty of it or the tiny hand-painted leaves on the lace that made her say it. Such painstaking work surely was never meant to be worn by a simple girl from a ranch in Australia. It was meant for someone much more refined, someone who breathed rarified air and drank wine from precious bottles of reserve.

“You will wear it and any others I give you,” he barked at her.

This time she growled, huffing out an angry breath of frustration. “So am I supposed to dress in front of you, or is it too much to ask that I get a little privacy?”

“It’s too much to ask,” he said flatly.

He stood at the foot of the bed watching her every action and reaction, so he couldn’t have missed the lethal daggers she shot him from her eyes. Oh, if only looks could kill! Her glare right then would be poison tipped to boot!

Pressing the nightgown to her breasts for cover, she tried to keep concealed as she wriggled free of her clothing. She felt a hot blush burning up over her face as he watched her intently through every second of her struggle. She tried to gauge what he was getting out of watching her like this, but his expression was as inscrutable as everything else about him seemed to be. To cover for her shame and embarrassment, she began to talk.

“S-so you control people’s nightmares?” she asked him. “Does that mean everyone’s nightmares everywhere? All at once? Or can you only do it one at a time?”

His lips twitched as she asked questions too fast to allow for answers. He fought the urge to smile because he knew it would flash her a mouthful of fangs and she hadn’t proven to be very accepting of such things.

“I do not control anything. I guide what an individual person’s mental energy is seeking for. I create the images and environs that will provoke the greatest response.”

“You mean what will frighten them the most,” she said with a frown.

“Often,” he agreed. “But nightmares are not just about fear. They can be about our darkest desires as well. They express unresolved issues from the waking world. They are cathartic fantasies that generate huge amounts of energy.”

“That’s the second time you’ve talked about energy,” she noted. She was struggling to figure out how to put the gown on while remaining fully covered at the same time. She had worked her blouse free, treating Adrian to flashes of a smooth midriff.

“Energy is everything,” he said. “It is powerful and all encompassing. It fuels everything in the world in one way or another. Energy is the reason I do what I do. I was not born to conduct the nightmares of others, but like Aerlyn, I was born with the talent to guide dreams. Some time ago, at a time when I used to truly be the man you met in your dreams, I made the choice to work with nightmare energy and all the power of the emotions it created. Years of indulging in this task has warped and contorted me into the beast you see before you.”

She blinked liquid gray eyes of surprise at him, forgetting to keep her chest covered as her hands dropped into her lap with her shock. Her lush little lips parted as she made a sound of disbelief and Adrian swallowed back a groan at the tempting sight of them. More and more he was noticing these sweet little details about her, and more and more he felt his desire for her growing. It didn’t seem to matter to the rest of his body that his head was well aware she wouldn’t let him anywhere near her if she could at all avoid it.

Well, she couldn’t avoid it, he thought hotly. He would see to that. He might not be able to do anything else, but he would touch her.

“You mean you did this to yourself on purpose?” she asked with disbelieving awe. “Why? Why would you do something like that?”

“I had little choice in the end. I am a Guardian for my people. They are starving more and more with every day that passes, and the only way to feed them—”

“Is with energy,” she filled in for him, her tone absent and thoughtful. “Those beings whom I met were pure energy.”

“The Ampliphi.” He nodded. “Our governing body.”

“But one was solid…like us.”

“Julian. He has not yet evolved to the point of being able to exist as pure energy. That faded state takes much less energy to maintain than a corporeal state does, so those who can prefer to remain the way you saw them to be. Each Ampliphi has a Guardian, who is like a reaper who goes out into your emotionally energetic world and harvests energy to bring back to the Ampliphi, who then doles it out to the villages of Beneath and its peoples. We do our best, and yet our people still want.”

“Because they can’t exist in the energy state like the Ampliphi can?”

His mouth curled at the corner as he appreciated her quick and bright mind. He had taken her for many reasons, but he had not realized just how intelligent she was.

“Correct,” he replied. “We are very sensitive to emotions of any kind. Anything will feed our hunger, but the type of energy received heavily influences us.”

“Like before. When I was able to hurt you,” she said in a small voice.

“Yes. Although…” He frowned. Should he tell her that normal people from his world suffered the opposite of what he did? Should he tell her that he now thrived on negative emotions, the darker the better, and apparently, thanks to what she had shown him, he now knew that positive emotions and kindnesses were shockingly painful? It had taken him completely off guard when it had happened. Aerlyn was everything he wasn’t, light and positive and good, and she often tried to touch him—didn’t she? Adrian tried to think back to the last time Aerlyn had made actual physical contact with him.

“So, this nightmare energy has clearly poisoned you,” she said, her eyes running down over him like a rapid physical touch that made him tense responsively. “Wouldn’t it poison your people as well?”

“The Ampliphi filter and buffer what I bring them. They dole it out evenly along with the more positive energies like what Aerlyn brings them. So by the time it gets to my people, it is a blend of many energies and not the pure knot of tainted emotions that I deal with every single night.”

“Why didn’t you simply get energy from good dreams like your sister does and bring back only good energies to your people? Why bother with the negative at all?”

“Because there must be balance in everything. There must be negative energy in order to enrich the positive. Only that way can my people live full lives.”

Adrian reached out to grasp the footboard of the bed, needing to feel its solidness beneath his fingers, for some reason. It bothered him to speak of his people and the safe, normal lives they lived. It never had before, but now as he stared at Kathryn sitting curled up in his bed, her arms and shoulders exposed almost all the way to her breasts, he suddenly found himself craving the normalcy he could never have. He found himself craving her.

“Stand up,” he commanded throatily.

Surprised by the sudden demand, she moved her hands back to the silk that was clinging to her breasts.

“B-but…”

“And leave the gown on the bed.”

Kathryn felt heat crawl all over her skin as she realized what he wanted. She also realized she wasn’t in the position to deny him anything. The last thing she wanted to do was provoke him in any way, having seen what he was capable of.

She angrily got to her feet on the bed and threw down the peachy silk creation he’d given her, exposing her bare breasts. “Just when I am starting to feel sorry for you, you have to go and act like a monstrous pig!”

“I do not ask for, nor do I want, your pity!” he snarled from the foot of the bed. But even as he tried to act the beast, she saw his eyes rivet onto her breasts with something that didn’t feel so much like exploitation of her vulnerabilities. The heat creeping around her skin turned into a whole new kind of blush and she raised her arms to cover herself in her resulting confusion. “Keep your hands to your sides—unless you plan to touch yourself, Kathryn. That would please me very much.”